Apartment Life #289

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 25 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 25 years here in a weekly blog post. 

This past Sunday the police helicopter was flying over my apartment complex for a couple of minutes and then made a wider circle over the next street over as well. 

Then this police car sat here for a second and sped off around the corner. Something was happening one street away from mine but I don't know what. I heard a few police sirens headed that way but this was the only police car I saw on my street. 

 

Then a couple of minutes later this ambulance headed that way as well. I have no idea what happened but something did. 

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There was also some drama here at my apartment complex. My elderly neighbor who lives three doors away from me had her car towed out of the alley last month. She does not have a license plate and it's not registered because she says that it's in her deceased husband's name and she just hasn't bothered to fix it. She has a license plate but she only puts it on her car to drive because it's not her license plate, she stole it. She's the same lady that a couple of years ago I told you she got caught stealing registration stickers off of somebody's license plate so I know this license plate is not hers she said that it's not hers cuz she hasn't registered the car in her name.

So the towing company came out towed her car. She called the office and the office told her that they have a contract with towing company and if anybody does not have a license plate on their car it gets towed away. She thought that she could make the management company pay to get her car out from the towing company so she didn't go down right away and when they refused to pay she went down and found out it was going to be $800 to get her car back from the towing company. Because they add on money for each day that they have your car.

So she got her car but she still hasn't registered it and she doesn't have a legal license plate on it. So she called legal aid and asked them if they would help her Sue the towing company and the management company for this apartment complex and they took her case. She had her first court case this past Tuesday and when her lawyer asked the towing company why they singled out her car and not the other cars in the alley who are not legal, they told her that 99% of the time including this time when they tow a car from the alley it's because someone from the management company has called them and told them to tow the car, and that was this case as well. So the managers here got caught lying to her when they told her that it's just policy that they had nothing to do with her car being towed.

I don't really think it matters that they got caught lying about how her car got towed though because it's not legal as in she doesn't have it registered and she did not have a license plate on her car so even though it's not listed somewhere in the lease or on a sign outside that you can't have an unregistered car, I still think because her car was not legal that she's not going to win this case. So I'm kind of surprised that legal aid took the case in the first place.

So on Tuesday the lawyer amended the lawsuit to include all of the managers for this complex because there are a few since none of them would come clean and say which one called the towing company and had her car towed so they are all being sued individually. So on Wednesday my neighbor had a notice on her door that she told me was a inspection notice and she's really mad because they singled her out for an apartment inspection which they usually do once a year and they do everybody's apartment at the same time over a period of 2 days.

The letter stated that sometime in the next 7 days they would come and inspect her apartment. Now every other inspection letter that we've gotten yearly they give us a 24-hour notice because legally that's all they're required to give us. So she called the apartment complex and talked to a manager and told them that they would not be coming into her apartment and that if they tried she would call the police. She also called her lawyer at legal aid and she's waiting for them to get back to her.

Now I don't know how it is in other states but in this state if you live in an apartment or a house and you have a manager or an owner, they are only required to give you a 24-hour notice that they are going to come in and inspect your apartment. So I don't think she has any way of stopping them from coming in and doing an inspection but it is awfully weird that they would single her out for an inspection, give her a 7-Day notice instead of a 24-hour notice that they are coming, and it happens right after the first court date that she had with them. That seems like quite the coincidence to me.

Then Thursday night at 8:30pm she knocks on my door and tells me that maintenance and the manager just came to her door and told her that the office was broken into and someone stole all of the master keys for the apartment doors as well as all the keys to the mailboxes and that they needed to change her locks and that the mailbox locks had already been changed for the most part and she would be getting a key tomorrow. So she let them change her locks because she believed their story but the thing is they didn't come to anyone else's apartment in this Courtyard to change their locks only hers.

 So when she came to my door I told her I think she just got snoockered and that they wanted to make sure that they could get into her apartment when they do the inspection. But she said she saw the police,  but she's known to lie and I had just been out there like 15 minutes beforehand with the dog and there were no police. But why would they only change her lock at 8:30 at night and not come to anyone else's apartment, not put any notices on anyone's door and I also went and checked my mail and my key still works so they didn't change my mailbox lock either. I could be wrong but the seems really fishy.

Friday morning no one was here changing anyone else's door locks, no notices were put out and none of the mailbox locks were changed. So they only changed her door locks and I'm sure it was to make sure they could get in her apartment to do the inspection sometimes next week. 

The high this week was 94F/34C

The low this week was 58F/14C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.